Good News for the Graduating Students

THE DEADLINE FOR THE SUBMISSION Of EXTRA-CREDIT PROJECTS HAS BEEN MOVED TO MONDAY!

Extra-credit Project

Look for the appropriate media (pictures for architecture and painting, while recordings for music) belonging to the mentioned art movements below. Aside from the media, please include the necessary information such as artist, composer, or architect responsible for the artwork; art movement it belongs; year it was made, constructed, exhibited, shown or performed in public for the first time; medium, and dimensions.

Notes on Artemesia Gentileschi

Notes on Genius

In a study of how the notion of genius evolved, Gender and Genius, Christine Battersby argues that ‘genius’ came into its modern use only towards the end of the eighteenth century. In this time period people revised both Renaissance and ancient views of men’s and women’s natures. The late medieval picture of lustful woman was replaced by a view of woman as pure and gentle. Perhaps strangely, the male became more associated with a set of qualities including not just reason but also imagination and passion. Genius was now seen as something ‘primitive’, ‘natural’, and unexplained by reason. As the notion of genius got tied with men, there were peculiar shifts and diagnoses: Rousseau denied that women could be geniuses because they lack the requisite passion, but Kant reversed things by insisting that genius obeys a sort of law or inner duty, and claiming that women lacked such discipline in their emotions.

 Freeland, Cynthia. Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction.Oxford U Press: New York, 2001.

Notes on Gender Issues in Art

*This for my MWF 1:30-2:30 and 5:30-6:30, and TTH 1:30-3:00 and 3:00-4:30 classes.

Is gender relevant to art, to the work an artist makes, or to meaning? What about sexual orientation? It seems some people think it matters—though why, and for what good reasons, remains to be seen.